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edenfalling1. I made some edits to Undertow, based mostly on Jade Rozes's review, and the revised version is now up on ff.net. Hopefully the changes reveal Team 7's employers, clarify Tsukimaru's motives, and make Mikatsuki's character more consistent.
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2. I am now caught up on season 4 of Heroes. Hulu is a wonderful service. :-) Now I need to find time to start watching season 1; I have the first disc from Netflix, but I keep getting distracted by other things.
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3. Vathara has an amazing talent for dragging me into new fandoms. I have a sinking feeling I will end up finding and watching Avatar: The Last Airbender now, after successfully avoiding everything beyond the random fringes of the fandom for several years. *sigh* Oh well, at least I am told it's a good show?
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4. We are selling office supplies at the smoke shop now. WTF???
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5. In other smoke shop news, on Monday night a customer named (so ET tells me) Mary Beth Fitzgerald shoplifted a pack of foreign cigarettes. I had brought up cigarettes and tobacco from the basement, and I left the box with the cigarettes on the pipe case while I put the tobacco supplies away. Then, as I went to the counter to throw out an empty bag, this woman looked furtively around, grabbed a cigarette pack from the box, and then distracted me with questions about Djarum clove cigars.
I know what she did because we have her on tape from two angles. Also, as soon as she left, I went to put up the foreign cigarettes and noticed a pack was gone. (I have to count them before I go to the basement, so I know how many packs to bring up, and then I count what I am bringing up so I can adjust inventory levels on our tally sheet. It is really obvious when the numbers don't add up.) Because I am not MS and do not have nifty psychic shoplifter radar, I did not immediately jump to 'OMG, shoplifter!' -- first I checked the basement to make sure I had not accidentally left a pack down there -- but then ET told me the woman was a known suspicious Commons rat, and I said, "I bet she stole it!"
We did not report it then, partly because we were busy, and partly because we didn't know how to make the security system replay the video of the relevant time. On Tuesday, PM showed me how to get a replay (I am not at all sure I remember the steps, but I can probably figure it out again if necessary), we called the police, and we gave a full report of the incident. Since the woman has most likely smoked the cigarettes by now I doubt much will come of it, but she is now banned from the store and if she comes in again, we can call the police and report her for trespassing.
Apparently we can do that for all banned people. I was unaware of this. The next time Criminal Brendon tries to sneak in -- as if getting a haircut will make me forget he shoplifted! -- I am totally calling the cops on his ass.
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6. My mom is coming up to visit this weekend, via a trip to Misericordia to collect a bunch of magazine boxes that the Drew library uses to file their political pamphlet collection (or related items). We originally planned this visit for September, when the weather was warmer, so I am not sure our plan to visit the Montezuma Wildlife sanctuary still holds. Perhaps we will visit the Cornell ornithology lab in Sapsucker Woods instead. And we may go to Bellweather Hard Cider as well; we've always skipped over that on our vineyard tours before, but I have recently become interested in cider.
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2. I am now caught up on season 4 of Heroes. Hulu is a wonderful service. :-) Now I need to find time to start watching season 1; I have the first disc from Netflix, but I keep getting distracted by other things.
-----
3. Vathara has an amazing talent for dragging me into new fandoms. I have a sinking feeling I will end up finding and watching Avatar: The Last Airbender now, after successfully avoiding everything beyond the random fringes of the fandom for several years. *sigh* Oh well, at least I am told it's a good show?
-----
4. We are selling office supplies at the smoke shop now. WTF???
-----
5. In other smoke shop news, on Monday night a customer named (so ET tells me) Mary Beth Fitzgerald shoplifted a pack of foreign cigarettes. I had brought up cigarettes and tobacco from the basement, and I left the box with the cigarettes on the pipe case while I put the tobacco supplies away. Then, as I went to the counter to throw out an empty bag, this woman looked furtively around, grabbed a cigarette pack from the box, and then distracted me with questions about Djarum clove cigars.
I know what she did because we have her on tape from two angles. Also, as soon as she left, I went to put up the foreign cigarettes and noticed a pack was gone. (I have to count them before I go to the basement, so I know how many packs to bring up, and then I count what I am bringing up so I can adjust inventory levels on our tally sheet. It is really obvious when the numbers don't add up.) Because I am not MS and do not have nifty psychic shoplifter radar, I did not immediately jump to 'OMG, shoplifter!' -- first I checked the basement to make sure I had not accidentally left a pack down there -- but then ET told me the woman was a known suspicious Commons rat, and I said, "I bet she stole it!"
We did not report it then, partly because we were busy, and partly because we didn't know how to make the security system replay the video of the relevant time. On Tuesday, PM showed me how to get a replay (I am not at all sure I remember the steps, but I can probably figure it out again if necessary), we called the police, and we gave a full report of the incident. Since the woman has most likely smoked the cigarettes by now I doubt much will come of it, but she is now banned from the store and if she comes in again, we can call the police and report her for trespassing.
Apparently we can do that for all banned people. I was unaware of this. The next time Criminal Brendon tries to sneak in -- as if getting a haircut will make me forget he shoplifted! -- I am totally calling the cops on his ass.
-----
6. My mom is coming up to visit this weekend, via a trip to Misericordia to collect a bunch of magazine boxes that the Drew library uses to file their political pamphlet collection (or related items). We originally planned this visit for September, when the weather was warmer, so I am not sure our plan to visit the Montezuma Wildlife sanctuary still holds. Perhaps we will visit the Cornell ornithology lab in Sapsucker Woods instead. And we may go to Bellweather Hard Cider as well; we've always skipped over that on our vineyard tours before, but I have recently become interested in cider.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-15 02:42 am (UTC)Avatar is indeed good, though the voice acting is... well, it's US voice acting. It improves over time, though. There's a rather odd double aspect to it. Half of it is a kid's show, with the kind of exaggerated moral slapstick one expects from a Western kid's cartoon. The other half is animated Greek drama, all angst and high drama and family tragedies and such. Sometimes the pace shifts from one to the other a bit abruptly. Definitely worth watching, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-15 06:37 am (UTC)I like genre blends -- they have a much higher chance of being something I haven't seen a hundred times before -- but there is always the risk of genre tossed salad rather than a smooth mix, isn't there? *grin* And I am fairly insensitive to voice acting nuances, so that shouldn't be an issue.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-15 12:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-16 03:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-16 02:48 pm (UTC)i'm sure the boards and maybe some of the lj groups could get bad. i'm only in CAPSTARA on lj and find it amusingly pro-zutara without attacking other pairings.
i'm not against Kataang in any way. I just have (personal) issues with any pairing with a child under the age of 15. I always have. I generally like post-series fics (about the aftermath of the war and rebuilding the nations) where Katara is 15 and Zuko is 17 at teh very least. Aang is still only 13 and frankly that squicks me some to involve him in a pairing unless the fic is way post war.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-20 06:26 am (UTC)I am not opposed to Zutara -- I don't see the point in being opposed to ships in general -- and if a story takes the time to build a proper, non-melodramatic relationship between them without relying on the destined love trope, while also including an interesting gen plot, I may well enjoy it. But I have thus far found myself reading even those stories with a niggling voice at the back of my head saying, "Okay, fine, but can we stop lingering on the romance and get back to the gen plot, the world-building, and the character explication parts?" which is generally a sign that a pairing is not my cup of tea. *shrug* Obviously, your mileage varies!
While I agree that strongly sexualized Kataang would be icky until he is, as you say, fifteen-ish, young teenagers can be awfully cute in the throes of crushes and fumbling first tries at romance. And nothing says that Aang and Katara have to go past kissing during canon or for a few years thereafter. Since my impression of canon is that they do not particularly sexualize Kataang, I fail to see your objection to the pairing. Do you feel that all shipfics must be sexualized? If so, I would find that very odd. Or is it just that you have run across a lot of sexualized Kataang fics? Because I would find that rather odd as well.
Sorry for the doubled comment; I hit post too soon the first time.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-27 06:36 pm (UTC)Aang and Katara mesh to well too interest me in their dynamics. And I agree with you with the destinied love trope is well overplayed. I prefer my starcrossed lovers to have to work for their happy endings if they can get them at all. Fated love is too often a shortcut for things like actual character development.
I much prefer the worldbulding or AUs like Katara being rescued and raised in the Fire Nation by Iroh. Tempest in A Teapot by Akavertigo.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-28 12:01 am (UTC)Apparently, I like Zuko and Katara as friends, as enemies, and as... friendly rivals, maybe? But I am bored silly by them as lovers. I have no idea why this is so, but I doubt it's going to change no matter how many Zutara stories I try reading.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-11-06 06:45 pm (UTC)I want well done stories period.
Canon should be a foundation not a wall.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-17 02:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-10-17 08:09 pm (UTC)